IBM advances cooling technology

POUGHKEEPSIE — The smartphone in your palm — the one used for countless Google Maps searches and Facebook status updates — actually contributes to pollution.

Jessica DiNapoli

POUGHKEEPSIE — The smartphone in your palm — the one used for countless Google Maps searches and Facebook status updates — actually contributes to pollution.

The smartphone itself doesn't emit carbon dioxide. The polluters are the football-field-sized data centers across the country responding to inquiries from phones, personal computers and tablets.

Data centers, humming with thousands of power-hogging computers called servers, use 2 to 3 percent of the world's energy, said Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group, a Long Island research firm. In the U.S., much of that energy comes from coal-powered plants, he said.

Slowing data center energy use is one of the main missions for a cadre of IBM researchers in Poughkeepsie.

The 400-acre site is one of the global company's major meccas for developing cooling technology, said spokesman Michael Corrado.

The researchers made major advancements toward saving computing energy in December, when they wrapped up a two-year project with the U.S. Department of Energy. The department tasked IBM scientists with finding cheaper ways to keep computers cool, one of the major energy users at data centers.

The scientists overlaid a standard server, about the size of a pizza box, with a system of copper piping and plates. The pipes carry cold water over high-heat parts in the server and then outside, where it's exposed to the outside temperature, cooled down and then again circulated through the server, said IBM engineer Milnes David.

It's a closed-loop system, not unlike a radiator in a car. The system decreases the amount of energy data centers use to cool servers from 25 percent of their total energy to 4 percent, according to IBM.

David sees the retrofitted servers making headway in IBM's market — large businesses and governments — in the next three years.

The servers retrofitted with copper radiators are so widely used they're practically a commodity in the computing world, according to David. That means that their wide adoption could help significantly decrease energy use.

Heat in servers comes from their computing brains, chips. As chips become hotter, they become less efficient and need more energy to run. Keeping the chips cool helps them operate better and use less energy, Doherty said.

Water cooling — as opposed to more widely used air-cooling systems — is considered the way of the future for servers, Doherty said. Water cooling is more efficient, he said.

IBM's green energy data center, a server and supercomputer showroom in Poughkeepsie, demonstrates some of the company's sophisticated air-cooling technology.

The glass-enclosed room has thick bundles of network cables and piping running underneath a raised floor. The raised floor help with ventilation, said Roger Schmidt, IBM senior fellow.

IBM's work on energy efficiency is far ahead of any of its competitors, said Doherty, a physicist who closely monitors Big Blue's progress. The company's R&D budget last year totaled $6 billion.

Some of that money went toward work in IBM labs in Switzerland and Germany. They're experimenting with replacing heating systems in homes and offices with high-powered servers, Corrado said.

"IBM has kept its foot on the gas," Doherty said. "They're not just inventing for inventing's sake."